With much of the Midwest and the Northeast broiling—or about to broil—in extreme summer heat this week, meteorologists are talking about heat waves and heat domes.
With much of the Midwest and the Northeast broiling—or about to broil—in extreme summer heat this week, meteorologists are talking about heat waves and heat domes.
Both mean it’s really hot—and people will hear those terms a lot more as the world heats up. What’s the difference?
Here’s what to know:
It’s helpful to think of a heat dome as what’s happening in the atmosphere. A heat wave is how that affects people on the ground, said Ken Kunkel, a research professor of atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University.
When a high-pressure system develops in the upper atmosphere, it causes the air below it to sink and compress. That raises temperatures in the lower atmosphere.
Because hot air expands, it creates a bulging dome.
The boundaries of this week’s heat dome are not well-defined, Kunkel said, but the National Weather Service has said that the most extreme heat is expected in the Ohio Valley and the Northeast.
The eastern heat dome follows an earlier-than-usual one this month in the Southwest. Last year, there were 645 heat-related deaths in Phoenix.
A heat wave is defined by how intense the heat is, how long it lasts and where it occurs, said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections.
In general, several days of 90-plus degree temperatures in Texas are “no big deal”, Masters said.
